Mėndez

surname · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Mėndez is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Angola it is the 18th most common surname. Recorded meaning: From Spanish Méndez from Mendo+-ez. Introduced through the Catálogo alfabético de apellidos .

rarermore common
  • UYUruguay1 in 86(measured from records)
  • CRCosta Rica1 in 114
  • SVEl Salvador≈1 in 182

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Mėndez itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

161,717 people, 2010

#154 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

5 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
468 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 86 (inferred from the name graph)

Uruguay

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

MėndezLatin(measured from records)
МендешCyrillic(measured from records)
เมนเดซThai(measured from records)
ΜεντέςGreek(measured from records)
멘데스Hangul(measured from records)

3 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Mendez in US United States, AR Argentina, VE Venezuela and 4 more, Mendes in PT Portugal, AO Angola and Méndez in UY Uruguay.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

From Spanish Méndez from Mendo+-ez. Introduced through the Catálogo alfabético de apellidos .

Sources 4

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Wiktionary
  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Mėndez counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.

Where Mėndez is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#202161,7171 in 2.1K166KMendez468
VE Venezuela#37≈120,000 est.≈1 in 240775Mendez116
AR Argentina#7090,1741 in 50490KMendez143
ES Spain#4777,1951 in 64877KMendez223
CO Colombia#80≈73,000 est.≈1 in 67256Mendez170
PT Portugal#23≈55,000 est.≈1 in 186—Mendes199
CR Costa Rica#2644,6801 in 11445KMendez126
UY Uruguay#47339,3661 in 8639KMéndez89
SV El Salvador#37≈36,000 est.≈1 in 18238KMendez75
AO Angola#18≈30,000 est.≈1 in 1.1K2Mendes65
GW Guinea-Bissau—≈18,000 est.≈1 in 10885K—31

161,717 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.

Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); asosab — SAIME ID-card names (1896–1996); El Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); the co-datosgov-candidates register; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; A comprehensive look at the most common surnames in Guinea-Bissau, compiled by the Instituto Nacional de Estatística de; INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).

Evidence(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Mėndez under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Mėndez mean, and where does it come from?
From Spanish Méndez from Mendo+-ez. Introduced through the Catálogo alfabético de apellidos . Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and 2 other sources.
In which country does Mėndez have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 162 thousand people named Mėndez, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mendez.
Where is Mėndez most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Mėndez is densest in Uruguay — about 1 in 86 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Mėndez?
In the United States, the national register counted 161,717 people named Mėndez in 2010, about 1 in 2.1 thousand residents.
How common is Mėndez compared with other names?
In the United States, Mėndez is the 202nd most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Mėndez?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/m%C4%97ndez

The payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Mėndez” — the 202nd most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Mėndez parses inside a full name →